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Anyway, another weekend flew by, time is accelerating as I get older. They say there is a speed at which time stops and then it actually reverses. It seems I am approaching that turning point of speed. With any luck, by the time I am seventy, I will actually be 25. Wahoo!!!
Okay, I have to tell you a funny story from work. This company is pretty darn good to its' employees. The union contract spells out all the benefits for employees, and one of the benefits is that employees can take time off work for schooling or starting a business or whatever. They can take up to a year off at a time, and for certain leaves, their seniority is accrued, which is a big thing with unions. Seniority rules. I have an employee who went on leave last June, it was an educational leave. Several months later I overhear other employees talking about this person hiking through South America. What? How's that working for you?? So I report it to HR, but they don't take any action because we are in the midst of contract negotiations. Right. Anyway the new year rolls around and employees are selecting their vacation time for the year to come. This is the perfect excuse for HR to call this person.
They called him, but his phone was disconnected. So they called his next of kin (mother) and she says. "Oh, he is out of the country right now". Perfect excuse to call him into work to explain why he is abusing the leave of absence policy with false pretenses. And so they do, via his email address. Turns out he is in the Phillipines working on his tan. He has five days to get back to work. Man, that must have been an expensive flight. So he is back tonight. Tomorrow, we will have a sit down with him, his shop steward and his passport. I don't think they will can him, but he will get suspended. The guy is such a complete doofus, and he gets away with this shit all the time. They call him Teflon man, because nothing sticks to him. Ballsy.
I think I told you I am working on a detective novel. I used to write quite a bit, but for the last twenty or so years, not so much. It's really hard. Just picking the main character is tough. You write what you know, so they say, and what I know is me. So the damn main character is becoming a cranky cynical old lady that has a lot of shared history with me. Maybe I should write about the person I would like to be, young, strong, thin, beautiful and rich. Sort of a female Lord Lynley. Hmm. Trying hard not to write a story full of stereotypes, you know the kind - crazy neighbor, sinister cousin, that kind of thing.
I love to read and I am still consuming a book a day, or there abouts. Right now I am in the midst of the Scandanavian field of writers. I found Stieg Larson a few years ago and absolutely fell in love with his characters, as seemingly the rest of the world has. Prior to that, I was a Wallender fan, and before that - Smila's Sense of Snow rocked my boat. Now I am on the second of two books by Camilla Lackberg that are very good. There is something sparse, spare, almost minimalist in the writing, but it conveys a depth of land and culture and character that I find compelling.
Perhaps it is because I grew up in country very similar to Scandinavia. Plenty of rocks, snow and trees. A whole different mindset in a really cold land. North of Lake Superior is as cold and desolate and as beautiful as any Scandanavian country. It has the requisite granite cliffs, the towering pines and howling winter winds. It has wolves and bears and all manner of wicked wildlife. The people are plain in their thinking and speaking. The only new technology they want to talk about is snowmobiles.
Life is short and harsh, people fall victim to the perils of the universe as they know it. Hard living and hard drinking, tethered to short tempers and small minds make for a chaotic existence. Though I know this area well, I will refrain from using it as a backdrop in any of my stories because that would be over the top autobiographical.
So I have picked the west coast as the locale, but it could be anywhere, I may not even name the town or city. A fictional sort of place, a conglomeration of several towns I know and love. It is surprisingly tough to do, to write that is. When I read a well written book, it flows, the words become my words and I can instantly see and identify with the characters. When I write, I find it hard to make people likeable, since I have so few role models to work with. So I am in chaper three, main character is introduced, main story line is introduced and a few minor characters have managed to enter from the sidelines. What I am having trouble with is not making it sound like a 12 year old wrote the story. Every chapter ends with a "surprise unknown" and that's a bad habit. It's not an action thriller for crying out loud.
So now as I am reading books I am paying more attention to how they are written. I can't even decide on 1st person, 3rd person perspective. Who'd a thunk it? Writing, not just writing, but writing well takes courage my love....
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